A Queen-Mother at Work: On Handan Sultan and Her Regency During the Early Reign of Ahmed I

Abstract

Handan Sultan (d. 1605), the Bosnian mother of Ahmed I (r. 1603-1617), has thus far remained an ambiguous political figure in Ottoman historiography. This article seeks to remedy this ambiguity by providing a detailed discussion of Handan Sultan’s life, political career and various undertakings in the light of new historical evidence, as well as with respect to the related scholarly literature on early modern Ottoman royal women. Accordingly, by utilizing the unpublished letters of the contemporary Venetian ambassadors resident in Istanbul in conjunction with various Ottoman archival and narrative sources, this study examines first Handan Sultan’s long years of concubinage in the harem of her husband, Mehmed III (r. 1595-1603), and then her queenmothership during the first two years of the sultanate of her teenage son, Ahmed I. Overall, as the first comprehensive biographical study on Handan Sultan, this article demonstrates that, contrary to the established scholarly opinion, Handan Sultan was a precursor regent queen-mother well before her famous successors, such as Kosem Sultan (d. 1651) and Turhan Sultan (d. 1683), played the same critical role in Ottoman dynastic and court politics in the seventeenth century.